there's a scratch on the very inside of the platter and i'm wondering if there's any point buying parts to try get it working again.

is it hopeless?

thanks in advance

You already opened up this drive. It is pointless to go on with this mess now. It is your drive, time and momey do as you think best. If you had not opened it there is way around this one to get back your data. Good luck

_________________
Iorana Haraharaini

It's not necessarily hopeless but it is beyond your scope to do this. As far as opening disks are concerned, this is never recommended because of possibility of contamination to media surfaces. Some on this forum like to penalize users for their audacity in opening their drives by telling them that this will automatically escalate the cost of recovery. We don't punish users for opening the disks but if we find fingerprints or obvious scratches caused by inexperienced fingers then it will certainly raise the cost of recovery. Note: Western Digital drives should never be opened by a novice.

U didnt elaborate on what seagate drive ? Momentus with parking outside? Or some 3.5 .11 with parking zone on the inside?
If u are very lucky , and the heads did damage to parking area only - a pro DR shop can help u.

@ Msurgeon. Not ALL WD drives have the alignment issue. But as a rule of thumb id agree , its always a bad idea to open the drives just to take a look +)

Since most WD drives we see these days are aligned through the cover screw it's simpler to offer the general caveat not to open them at all.

Well, maybe i am just extra lucky. None of the new WDs give me that problem. Only some of the old ones.

IMO contamination is a secondary issue when the drive has been opened... the main problem is that you no longer have a known quantity inside the drive. When a drive is sealed you know that nobody has taken the platters out and turned one or more upside down and put them back in, but if the seal is broken there's no telling.

_________________
You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

well, i didn't put my fingers on the platters, just removed the lid for about a minute and had a quick look.

as for the value of the data, it's not that important but it would have been nice to recover *some* of the files on it IF there was a reasonably priced way of doing so.

specifically, i was looking to recover propellerhead reason songs, there's probably a dozen or so, all around 50KB each since the actual audio samples are stored externally and not required.

while they would be nice to recover, i couldn't justify spending hundreds of dollars to do so but i'd be willing to try on my own.

to answer your question Alexii, the drive is Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 3.0Gb/s 250-GB Hard Drive ST3250410AS

I'm not saying I don't believe you, but this is what everyone says... including the people that unscrewed everything and let their dog lick it

So this is the reason for the extra charge when drives have been opened, we have to spend extra time going over everything to make sure someone didn't screw with it before the drive can even be powered up

_________________
You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Point well-taken. Can't say I've run into that kind of situation but it's certainly possible.

Heya m8. Looks like there is a chance to recover this , but unfortunatly its nothing u can do urself. Need tools and experience.

With a good head change tool he can change heads, but he need the pc3000 as well plus knowlage plus expirience plus time...send it to someone else...it is cheaper.

_________________
HddSurgery - Professional Data Recovery Tools